Where Italian salons want brand support: marketing first, accounting third
A box arrives at a small salon in Modena: the brand’s new campaign, two posters and a stack of leaflets with a model nobody in the town has ever seen. The owner props one poster by the mirror, puts the leaflets under the till and goes back to her client. A week later the leaflets are still there. What she actually needed that week was a few lines to send her regular clients on WhatsApp about the new treatment, and a way to describe it on her price list. That gap is what the latest survey on salon marketing support in Italy brings out.
Cosmetica Italia asked 971 Italian salons where they would like support for their business. 47.0% named business development and marketing initiatives, 46.4% digital and traditional promotion, 30.3% accounting and budgeting, and 19.4% administrative tools such as booking and waste disposal. Italian salon owners are not asking brands for more brochures. They are asking for help selling.
The paradox in the salon marketing support numbers
Read the survey carefully and something seems not to add up. In the same report, “marketing support” scores lowest, at 4.27 out of 5, among the criteria salons use to choose a supplier. Yet business development is the area where most salons want help.
My reading, after many years working with this sector, is that the two answers are not in conflict. Salons do not value the marketing material brands usually send. They value help that works in their own salon, with their own clients. The box of posters in Modena counts as marketing support on the brand’s side; for the owner, it is something to find a place for.
A poster with a model the client has never seen does not sell a service. A simple Instagram post the salon can adapt, a WhatsApp message to bring back clients who have not booked in months, a line of price-list text that explains a treatment in plain words: these do. They take a brand’s marketing team an afternoon to prepare, and they save a two-person salon hours it does not have.
What useful support looks like from the salon side
The first thing a brand can offer is service naming and price-list text the salon can simply copy. Many owners struggle to put a new treatment into words that a client understands at a glance, and a brand that has already done that work makes the service easier to sell from day one.
The second is local promotion ideas sized for a two-person salon, not for a flagship store in a city centre. A small salon needs actions it can run between appointments with its existing clients, not a campaign built for a chain. A message to clients who usually come in before the holidays, a small offer linked to a new service, a photo of real work done in that salon: things the owner can do herself with her phone, in her own voice.
The third is simple training on the numbers: cost per service, minimum hourly revenue, the share of retail in the takings. With 30.3% of salons asking for help with accounting and budgeting, this is a real gap that few suppliers address, and one where a brand can make itself useful beyond the product.
The fourth is help with Google and online booking, where many clients now choose their salon before they ever walk through the door. An owner who has never set up her online profile properly is invisible to them, however good her work is.
Two questions brands ask
What support do Italian salons want most? Business development and marketing initiatives, at 47.0%, and promotion, at 46.4%, according to Cosmetica Italia. Do salons need help with accounting? 30.3% say so, a real gap that few suppliers address.
Related: what Italian salons want from a supplier, price-list mistakes that cut margin and seven numbers that grow a salon.
So before the next campaign box leaves the warehouse, a brand’s marketing team could ask itself a simple question: when the owner in Modena opens it, what will she be able to use with her clients that same afternoon?
Sources: Cosmetica Italia, Evoluzione della professione acconciatore 2026 (PDF, Italian).
